


Unsent

by ColdReign



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Angst, Bipolar Ian Gallagher, Canon Compliant, GW2020, Gallavich Week 2020, Gap Filler, M/M, Mentioned Fiona Gallagher, Mentioned Monica Gallagher, Mentioned Terry Milkovich, Mentioned Trevor (Shameless US), Post-Season/Series 07, Protective Mickey Milkovich
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:56:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25389403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ColdReign/pseuds/ColdReign
Summary: Summary:Five emails that sit in drafts for over a year.One reply.My episilitory fanfic for Gallavich Week, Day Two: Secrets.
Relationships: Ian Gallagher/Mickey Milkovich
Comments: 52
Kudos: 170
Collections: Gallavich Week 2020





	Unsent

**Author's Note:**

> Set in the time between 7x12 and 9x5. It’s cannon compliant in that I insist this COULD have happened. We just never heard about it. 
> 
> This is also generally heavier than what I've done in the past. Welcome to season 8.

**Subject: Hi**  
Date: May, 28, 2018  
From: Ian Gallagher  
To: Mickey Milkovich  
2:30 AM

I know there’s no way this is ever going to reach you. I know I’m screaming into a void. Possibly a monitored void. I don’t know. I don’t know if you even still use this address. It would make a lot of sense if you didn’t. If you do, you should probably stop now.

Monica died.

I just want to tell you that. I want you to know, if there is any way to even tell you, that Monica died. She was already dead when I got on the bus to Chicago. I didn’t know that, but she was already dead.

I saw her right before you got out. Like right before. It didn’t exactly go well. I don’t know what I wanted, but I was mad right out of the gate and she can’t fucking cope with that. She only ever wanted things when they were easy. The hard stuff seemed to cut right through her. I don’t know if it was guilt or if she just wasn’t built for it. I know the guilt is bad. I know it feels like it’s going to choke you. But I still get so fucking angry at her.

I was the baby of the family for five years. It’s weird to think about now, but for a long time, I was the little one everyone had to look out for. And I remember it. I think I remember being really little better than most people do. Like I remember things from when I was three and four years old. I remember being sick and Fiona taking care of me. I remember her holding my hand to cross the street. I remember her helping me do up the buttons on my coat before school. I remember having this tiny tin lunch box that was old as fuck. It would always have a sandwich and a piece of fruit in it, and the fruit always crushed the sandwich. Like every fucking day. Fiona packed that lunch box.

I remember being taken care of. I remember how much of that wasn’t Monica. But I remember her being there, too. She wasn’t always around, but for a while there… probably from when I was three until after Carl was born, she was around more than she wasn’t. She and Frank used to fight. I don’t remember what about. I probably never understood it. But I remember how much I hated the screaming and how she’d gather me up in her lap. And I remember Fiona being eight years old and already in charge and angry at her. And she’d be crying and I’d go and try to make her feel better.

She probably doted on me a bit and I get why. It’s because I was easy. I just wanted everyone to be ok and I wasn’t ever mad at her like the people who understood what was happening were. I think she maybe did that to all of us at some point. Swooped in on the little ones because the older ones were angry. But for some reason, I’m the one fucked up enough that I never stopped looking for that. I would spend so much time trying to forget she existed and then, when things were really bad, she was the one I wanted. Hardly ever fucking had her, but I wanted her. And now that’s it. She can’t even be around to let me down anymore. She’s just gone. And it’s fucking forever.

I miss you. I miss you. I don’t know if I did the right thing. I want to see you. I would fucking kill to see you right now. Just for a minute. Just to hear your voice, just anything anything anything Mick.

I’m trying to picture you. Somewhere. Safe. Outside. Fucking sun on your face. Happy. I’m trying to remember you’re out there. I can’t reach you, but you’re out there. You didn’t die. Jesus Christ, please don’t die.

I shouldn’t fucking say this.

I don’t think I can ever make you understand how much I love you because I always fuck it up. But I got in the car because I love you. And I didn't cross the border because I love you. And I want you right now because I love you.

I need to see you. I feel like I’m coming out of my fucking skin. And I know I can’t and I know I might never, ever see you again. That never seeing you again is what’s fucking best for you. But it feels like you died, too. I thought I could handle it, but I’m not sure about that. I’m really not fucking sure.

Just stay alive, Mickey. Have a great life. Fall in love, have fun, be fucking free. I know you can be happy, but you gotta let yourself.

I’m sorry it can’t be with me. I know that’s what you wanted. You gotta know that it isn’t your fault that it couldn’t happen. That’s all on me. I wish it could be me. I really do.

But mostly, I wish you were here.

* * *

**Subject: I had a shitty dream.**  
Date: May, 28, 2018  
From: Ian Gallagher  
To: Mickey Milkovich  
2:30 AM

I also know I’m not going to send this now, because I never sent the other one. It’s like 75% knowing I don’t have the right to lay this shit on you, and 25% being scared someone would see it and it’d fuck things up for you. I know I shouldn't write this. It’s a therapeutic exercise. Like literally what they’d tell me to do in therapy.

Which is a fucking waste of time, by the way. And since I’ll never send this, you can’t argue with me. You’d fucking hate it, too. Not that you don’t need therapy. Just that, like most people, you can ignore needing it and then occasionally punch out a window.

Anyway. Write a letter you aren’t going to send is something they love to tell you to do in therapy and because I’m never going to send it, I’ll tell you what the dream was about.

Sometimes, not always, thank fuck, but sometimes I have dreams about your dad. Sometimes they’re about The Alibi. Sometimes they’re not.

This one wasn’t.

Here’s what sucks about it. It sucks when you have a terrible dream that is not in any way actually more terrible than what you lived through except that you’re, like, literally paralyzed. Which, in some ways, makes me feel worse, because when I lived it, I could move. I just… didn’t.

I know I was hurt and your dad had a gun, and I probably thought this was just one more shitty thing to live with. I don’t know.

But it changed everything.

I try not to think about it, because I know you never want to think about it, and it’s not like I have anything to say. It’s not like I didn’t know it was fucked up while it was happening, but now that I’m not 16… Mickey. That was fucked up. Your father is a fucking psychopath.

I don’t know why I’m dreaming about this shit now. I have suddenly lost the ability to “marshal my thoughts”. Just put things away and not look at them. It was a good skill to have and now I feel like someone just walked off with it. Like, “Hey. I was using that.”

These are the Awful Fucking Questions I should never ask myself:

What if I just didn’t come over that night? What if I left early? What if we stayed in your room? What if that just didn’t fucking happen?

Here’s another one: What if I never told Sammi about the military?

What if that one, huh? What if I hadn’t done that completely fucking meaningless thing that I didn’t even care about? What would our lives be like then?

The other thing I try not to think about is how you looked at the border. And maybe you don’t feel that way anymore, but I knew right then I was hurting you. It’s fucking insane because I used to read into every little thing with us. When you were just some guy I was hooking up with -- or at least that was what we pretended was happening -- you were the fucking sphyx to me. But at the border, I felt like I could read every thought you had like it was happening in my own head. And some it was pain and anger. But some of it was forgiveness. I hadn’t even finished leaving you, and you were already forgiving me.

And I was happy when you crossed over, Mick. I watched. I saw you get through in that fucking wig and your clip-on earrings. That shitty car. I watched you get away. It was maybe my last really good moment.

I never got to tell you -- you wore the hell out of that dress. You have great legs. I was right about that.

* * *

**Subject: You’d probably be a good person to have around for a meth deal.**  
Date: May, 28, 2018  
From: Ian Gallagher  
To: Mickey Milkovich  
2:31 AM

I hope you’re not dealing meth. I hope you’re not dealing anything. I’ve heard bad things about Mexican prisons.

I don’t even fucking know what I want you to be doing. Nothing, I guess. I want you to have found buried treasure. Then I can think of you just living in a shack by the beach. Sitting out on a porch covered in palm fronds, flipping through magazines like you used to do at the Kash & Grab. With a cold beer and a cigarette, in that Hawaiin shirt. You remember that shirt?

I’m still feeling pretty fucked up. I don’t know why. Everyone else is fine. They adjusted my meds a month and a half ago but it doesn’t feel like it changed anything. Everyone else has moved on, except Frank, which is fucked up. If it had been Frank, everyone else would feel like me and I’d be like them. Just kinda… fine. But right now Franks is the only other one who misses her and I guess I could talk to him, but it’s Frank. So I just don’t fucking care.

I’m probably being a creep about Trevor. I know for sure you don’t want to hear about that. I don’t know why I let myself do it. I just want fucking company, most of the time, I think. Not that Trev isn’t great, just… I know I’m there for the wrong reasons. I can feel it. I’m looking for comfort and I don’t have anyone to get it from. Not going to find it picking up in Boystown, so instead I go and make these sad puppy eyes at Trevor and hope he eventually takes pity on me.

Or I don’t know. Tells me to go the fuck away. I gotta snap myself out of this.

There’s probably a lesson in here about how, if you want to feel better about yourself, don’t hang around the ex you screwed over because you were still in love with your other ex. It doesn’t improve your self-esteem.

The sad thing — the really sad thing — is going to bed at night and trying to pretend I’m not alone. I’ve done that more than I’d ever admit to anyone. Stupid shit, like putting a pillow at my back so that it feels like someone’s there.

I miss you so fucking much. I hope it’s not like that for you. It would suck if we both felt like this.

* * *

**Subject: Fucking Fiona**  
Date: May, 28, 2018  
From: Ian Gallagher  
To: Mickey Milkovich  
2:31 AM

So Fiona was married. I understand if you forgot about that. I mostly have, too. But he was a musician and it was so short I don’t even really remember what he looked like. I don’t have the firmest grip on that time of my life, to start with. But I do know this -- he wrote a song about her. It was called The F Word and that’s what he sang in the chorus -- Fucking Fiona.

It wasn’t a nice song. She was really upset about it. I guess I’d have been, too.

Anyway. I definitely heard the song at some point because now it’s stuck in my head. Or maybe it’s just what I think it must have sounded like? All of his music was that emo indie rock shit. You’d hate it.

I’m not reeeeeeally getting along with Fiona right now. I don’t think I even want to talk about it. I’m mad, just all the fucking time, and I can’t talk to her when I feel like this. She’s not going to listen when I’m pissed. She’s just going to get pissed back. Know why? Because we’re both fucking Gallaghers.

What I’m mostly mad about is the fact that I’ve been doing something important, finally, and she doesn’t seem to notice or care until it's in her way. And it’s like… How do you not CARE? I’m your brother. I get that she never really gave a fuck that I was gay, but I’m still gay. I’m still part of a “persecuted minority” or whatever. It’s not like I’m asking her to go to Pride or put a PFLAG bumper sticker on her car. But fucking understand why this is important to me, maybe? That not everyone gets to be like me and just have their family mostly ignore the fact that they’re different. A lot of the kids at Children of the Night, the big thing that went wrong for them was just being gay. That’s it, that’s all it took. I’m not absolved from all responsibility just because that’s the one way my parents didn’t suck.

And that’s the other thing that drives me crazy. She acts like these kids are totally different than we are. Like they had everything we had, so they should be fine. But we had each other. That’s another thing all this hate can take away from people. They don’t just lose their parents, they lose their brothers and sisters, too, because everyone is in on this idea that they’re going to hell.

And, you know, even though I had it better than these kids, it’s not like some fucked up shit hasn’t happened to me, just because this country is so cool with people just hating their own children over who they want to be with. Not like that never touched my life.

Your Dad’s out, by the way. Maybe you know that. Maybe you have some way of keeping track. I saw him on the street the other day. He didn’t see me -- or he pretended he didn’t. I guess he’s not actively interested in killing me right now. I kinda wanted to get in his face, anyway. Just make him look at me. Remember who I am. Remember what he fucking did.

You asked me if I ever thought about you, remember? And all I said was “all the time”. But I really fucking meant all the time. I thought about you the way someone “thinks about” their right hand. It’s just a part of me, so it’s always there. In the stupidest fucking ways. Like buying one kind of frozen waffles over another because you liked it better. Or NOT buying one brand over another because you liked it better. Just remembering things you said, and tastes and opinions. Or that you’d been in a place, or had that shirt, or liked that song. Just all the fucking time thinking about you.

But I’d turned it into this background hum. I was just used to it and I tried not to look at it too closely. It was ok that way. You were gone for at least eight years, what the fuck else was I supposed to do, you know?

It’s harder now. I don’t know why. There’s still stupid stuff, like if I see a Kind bar, or a green station wagon, or see the prompt for Spanish on an ATM, even. But now I also turn shit over in my head a lot. I try not to ask myself the Awful Fucking Questions. And I try not to think about the really hard stuff. I try not to think about you touching my shirt collar under the bleachers whenever I put on my uniform, and I try not to think about how you smiled when I got in the car and I try not to think about “Fuck you, Gallagher.” But I know I”m trying. I can’t remember how I got to the hum last time.

I think the fact that I was so fucking depressed back then helped a bit. I was miserable about you, but I was miserable about everything. I was miserable about being alive. Not to freak you out. It’s just true.

Right now, I’m mostly pissed.

I missed my meds one day last week. I don’t think it mattered. Like, I don’t think it made a difference. If I said that to anyone in my life -- anyone -- they would freak out. So I’ll say it to you, in these fucking emails I don’t send.

I don't feel like they’re working. But it’s such a giant upheaval to change them. And I don’t think it even did anything last time. It’s a weird feeling when you do all the things you're told to do, and you have a list of all the things that used to work for you, but none of them help. You just never feel better. Because it starts to feel like you can’t feel better. And no one thinks you should expect to. Like maybe I just feel like this forever. Maybe this is where I live my whole life. And as long as I’m not making other people worry, it’s fine.

But I don’t want that.

Even worse, I don’t know if I can do that.

Gotta go, I guess. Gotta take my fucking night meds.

* * *

**Subject: Church**  
Date: May, 28, 2018  
From: Ian Gallagher  
To: Mickey Milkovich  
2:31 AM

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over...

I like that one. They read that one at the soldier's funeral.  
Fuck those fucking protestors.

Have you ever tried to picture what someone would have to do to you -- like really do -- to convince you that you don’t want to fuck men? Because I’ve tried to picture what it would take with me and it’s some Clockwork Orange shit. Fucking torture. And it still wouldn’t work, because I can’t imagine not being super clear about who I want to fuck.

There is no hate in true Christianity, you know that? Jesus preached love and forgiveness and I would forgive them if they would stop the hate, but they just keep coming. It’s like rats swarming when a boat goes down. Every time I turn around there are more of them, more people saying we should never have been born. More people telling us that the bible calls us an abomination.

But I knew love and it lifted me up. I knew love that made the world turn. The love wasn’t the problem. If we’d only had the love with none of the other shit, we’d still be together. The problem was always the people who hated us.

I wish I could have saved you from all the shit your father put us through. I wish I could have stopped it before any of it happened. So you never got hurt and you never got married and we never broke up and I never got sick and we never stopped being together. We should have been together, Mickey.

* * *

* * *

**Subject: Re: Church**

Date: September, 17, 2018  
From: Mickey Milkovich  
To: Ian Gallagher  
11:47 PM

Gallagher, what the fuck did you do?

You were right about the email address. Don’t fucking use it anymore. Just went in because I saw something and Google only told me so much. And I thought maybe. Maybe.

It doesn’t matter now because I’ve done something and it’s going to change things. Don’t freak out about that. I know it sounds dramatic as fuck, but it’s fine. Not like I blew up a fucking van or anything.

I don’t know when you wrote those emails. They all sent at once. Don’t know if you were in your right mind when you did that. Fuck, I don’t even know if you actually did that. And I definitely don’t know if I could have said anything to stop you or change anything. Probably not. You’re a stubborn asshole most of the time.

But. I need you to stay cool. Don’t let yourself drown in your fucking guilt or whatever. Just do what you need to do to be ok. Let Fiona and Lip and whoever the fuck else you might have up there help you. Let them take care of you if they try. Just hold on. What’s the shit they say now?

It gets better.

It’ll get better. That I fucking promise you.

M.

**Author's Note:**

> This story was heavily influenced by two people. First, @whaticameherefor because this basically flew into my head fully formed while I was reading her great story, Sideways (season six fix-it fic I desperately needed because I just wanted a lawyer to say “this conviction is ridiculous” so much.) And secondly, @damngoodcoffee, who had many conversations with me on Tumblr about season 8 and really got me in my feelings about where Ian was before Gay Jesus came along. 
> 
> And thirdly, @Gallavictorious on Tumblr, who is the person who told me Gallavich Week is a thing and it was about to happen. 
> 
> Thank you, thank you, thank you to anyone who read this far! You can find me at [Tumblr](https://dreamylyfe-x.tumblr.com/), too.


End file.
